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The Wankery Of Guaranteed Divine Protection

It’s quite funny when one mostly has atheist or agnostic pages in their FB news feed, yet somehow gets Christian propaganda every few days. Some groups actually target non-believers.

One recent example was an inspirational tale of how a young woman was nearly mugged on a back alley one night, the only thing keeping her safe being the two angels walking beside her.

It goes like this: when walking home on a dark street to take a shortcut, a young Christian woman saw a man in a doorway and immediately prayed for safety. He left her alone, but went on to mug someone else passing by, whose guardian angels must’ve been sleeping on the job. Oddly enough, the lucky girl heard about it the next day and went to the police to see if she could help identify the thug. As soon as she pointed him out, the thug confessed and told the story of her having had “two tall men by her side”.

Of course no location or names were present in the story; that might lead a person or two to try to verify it. Though such an outlandish story would need chances of verification in order to not be dismissed straight away.Apparently, the mugger was able to see angels (an extraordinary ability not many hardcore Christians have).

And of course it’s rather odd that being pointed out by the one he’d actually mugged was not enough for him to confess. She was the first to go to the police and give details, accurately enough for him to be found and taken into custody. But the climax (his confession) only occurred when the second one turned up. Not to mention the second one (angel girl) had no proof this had been the same person who had mugged the actual victim.

So basically, a guy who mugs women and doesn’t give a shit about the victim identifying him suddenly confesses when recognised by someone who has no proof of any wrongdoing on his part (who just passed him by in the street the same night). Makes sense, right?

But let’s indulge the story for a second. Even so, it would be no proof of the mugger actually seeing a couple of angels. Perhaps he was stealing to feed his drug habit; who knows what he was on and what else he might’ve seen besides the “two tall men” who weren’t actually there.

As a disclaimer, I’m not saying I don’t believe in apparitions; they are common throughout the world, yet equally enigmatic. I don’t, however, believe spirits can be brought into manifestation at the drop of a hat, by simply wishing for it. And I don’t believe in guardian angels who presumably allow all kinds of atrocities against innocent people daily, yet are credited for intervening sometimes.

The moral of the story might be either one of these:

Putting oneself in risky situations is fine provided you ask for protection from your guardian angels;

The victim of the mugging didn’t have God on her side;

We should thank God when others are harmed instead of us;

God loves people so much he lets anything happen to those who aren’t smart enough to pray to him in real time;

Angels are protection mechanisms needing activation (unless you ask them for help in real time they remain dormant or stand by and watch).

I wonder then why people are turned into martyrs for Jesus across the planet. Presumably they pray for safety as well, but the “two tall men” never show up.

Later Edit

The second inspirational story arrived recently; I’ve no idea if a Christian group posted it, the only clue being in the author’s fleeting “and that’s proof of how the Lord works”, something along these lines.

It was a moving story of two elderly people meeting in the same retiring home, after having spent sixty years apart, in perpetual loneliness (neither had married and they’d both been in love since their youth).

It goes like this: a bloke finds a wallet and in it an old letter, written sixty years prior, of a young lady parting with her boyfriend as her mother objected. He manages to track her down to a care home and finds the owner of the wallet living there as well, the two being unaware of each other’s presence (living on different floors in the same building). Then he helps them meet and so on, a happy ending.

Logistically, to me it seems strange that two people who’d been in love with each other for more than six decades, living in the same place, hadn’t crossed paths before to recognise each other. It just seems unlikely. You’d recognise the face of the one person you’ve ever loved, even many decades after. The guy was keen on wandering about apparently, as he’d lost his wallet on the pavement well outside of that care home. It seems strange to me he’d never wandered around in the building to find the lady in question. Plus, her letter was in his wallet, which he frequently lost, often found by staff – who were aware of both their names. Surely someone would’ve seen it and told the guy she was living there. It makes no sense.

But let’s give the story the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s true.

It still wouldn’t be the proof that God is kind and merciful. If he had been, he would’ve made these people cross paths earlier in life, when they could still get married and build a life together. The young lady wasn’t going to be 16 and under her mother’s thumb forever. It would be a story of elation yet depressing sadness in equal amounts. Sixty years of misery, so God could plan his great moment of reunification when they both only had a few years left to live.

If this actually happened, it was chance or whatever you want to call it, but not God’s merciful intervention.